Olympia This Week

Democrats pass carbon cap-and-trade scheme and Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS)  (Capital Press) 

Farmers will feel the consequences first -- then the rest of us will.

Democrats passed both a cap-and-trade and LCFS bill, the impacts of which will increase the gas tax by 55 cents without any measurable effect on the environment or better roads. Combined with the current rates, total gas tax will eventually grow to $1.23/gallon.  In short, this is just a tax increase.

Sen. Judy Warnick, the top-ranking Republican on the Senate agriculture committee, said, “I think the high cost is going to hit the low-income people and our agriculture people harder than anyone else.”

Republican Sen. Perry Dozier, an Eastern Washington farmer, warned the two bills will be a “poison pill for agriculture” because everything in agriculture depends on fuel. The bills would “give the Department of Ecology authority to implement the two programs.” That entails “writing the rules for cap-and-trade alone would cost $27.3 million over two years and occupy the equivalent of 54.5 full-time state employees.” As Senate Republican Leader John Braun put it, “We’re handing over the economy to an unelected agency.”

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Democrats’ cap-and-trade and LCFS plans are studies in corruption (Washington Policy Center)

Democrats in the state legislature passed both a CO2 cap-and-trade bill and a low-carbon fuel standard (LCFS). According to the Washington Policy Center’s Todd Myers, both plans would have a “corrupting effect, rewarding insider special interests and favored political allies while doing absolutely nothing to reduce CO2 emissions.”

Myers notes that the official fiscal note estimates that under the bill the “price of CO2-reduction in 2030 would be about $33 per metric ton (MT). By way of comparison, the cost of the LCFS is likely to be similar to California’s current price of $200 per MT – six times as much for the same amount of reduction.

The LCFS doesn’t reduce any additional CO2 or benefit the environment, it just makes the already-required emissions reductions more expensive, with the extra money going to biofuel corporations.”

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Some Democrats now voicing frustration over Inslee’s slow reopening  (NW News Network)

Gov. Jay Inslee’s fellow Democrats are using words like, “inconsistent,” “disastrous,” and “senseless” to describe his plan for reopening the state.

For many months, Republicans have voiced frustration over the slow pace of reopening businesses across Washington – now, it appears, some Democrats finally admit the frustration is warranted.

A trio of Olympia Peninsula Democrats wrote in a recent statement, “[I]t is clear that the governor’s plan exhibits a disastrous disconnect with the realities of our communities and, as their elected representatives, we must demand a reopening plan that is fair and sound.”
Democrats from counties like Clallam and Jefferson have voiced frustration over Inslee’s reopening plan, which gives preferential treatment to King, Snohomish, and Pierce counties while punishing rural regions of the state.

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Seattle Times op-ed: Capital gains is income, contrary to Democrats’ claims  (Seattle Times) 

A new op-ed in the Seattle Times calls out Washington Democrats for deceptively mislabeling their state income tax on capital gains.

Democrats categorized the tax as an excise tax rather than an income tax.

The op-ed explains that “were a capital-gains tax an excise tax, it would fall on the entire sales price (or a specific price per transaction), not just the net gain. It would be imposed on each transaction, not the aggregate of gains and losses.”

Undeniably, the “net proceeds from the sale of an asset are income, or that this money in an investor’s possession is — per Washington courts’ definitions — intangible property subject to ownership.”

The op-ed ends by warning, “The sleight of hand that disguises a tax on capital gains income as an excise tax is employed just as easily to tax all income, including wage income.”